


space, or the things in-between

by bookstvnerdlove



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-14 16:57:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2199666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookstvnerdlove/pseuds/bookstvnerdlove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She doesn't know what she's doing (it's too much). Only that they don't want her to go. (But how can she stay?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Emma shifts her body so she can lean on her elbow, torso raised, as she watches Ruby gather her clothes from the floor. Killian’s hand snakes around her stomach as he asks Ruby why she’s leaving, and didn’t she have a lovely time.

He asks her how it felt to feel him inside her while Emma’s lips were her on her clit, sending her over the edge not once, but twice. He asks her this while his hand traces small circles around Emma’s stomach, lightly pressing, until it stills, just above her, and Emma’s hips dip back – pressing into him, bringing him back to life – as she also feels the need building again.

She feels empty, on fire,  _greedy._

“Yes,” she whines as Ruby’s eyes stare at his hand, as if transfixed, but she still slips on her shorts and fastens her bra just the same.

“Why,” Emma asks, gasping as Killian’s hand finally moves further south, lightly tracing her, as she becomes more and more slick.

He shifts his body just enough to allow the sheets to slide further down her legs, a rush of cool air along her body.

Ruby’s eyes widen because now she can see as Killian slides one finger – then two – inside of her. She can’t help but moan because he feels so  _good_  but she also needs so much  _more._  His fingers are strong and sure and he curls one just enough that her moan turns into a gasp.

And then he’s gone just as quickly and her skin hot and twitchy as she presses back against him, even more insistent than before.

Killian has other plans for her, though. He leans in close until his teeth catch the lobe of her ear and tugs gently, before whispering in her ear how much he loves her - love  _them_  , together.

He must make eye contact with Ruby because her gaze shifts from Emma’s body to him and he asks her, doesn’t she want to know how Emma tastes. They haven’t done that yet. There’s so much more to explore, he says, making it sound so innocent, with that playful tone and another nip of his teeth – this time to Emma’s shoulder.

Ruby’s  eyes flare with heat and her tongue darts out to her lips, but still she doesn’t move.

“Please,” she says quietly, her teeth now pressing against her lower lip, “I just…”

Her voice trails off as she watches Killian’s hand return to Emma.

(Emma thanks the gods that he’s back, body flushed all over and on fire, his fingers circling her clit and she knows that she doesn’t have much time left before everything bursts.)

Ruby hesitates for one more moment before she shakes her head and blinks. “I just really need some space right now.”

Emma watches as her throat works through the words and she  _almost_  understands. It so much, almost  _too_ much, but it’s also so  _right_.

Then, she forgets everything – words, her name, the color of the sky – as Killian grips her hip and shifts her leg, and slides inside her. Ruby, hand on the door to their room, turns abruptly at the sound of Killian’s groan, and leans, back against the door, cheeks red and eyes bright.

“You’ll know where to find us if you change your mind, darling,” Killian says, his voice in Emma’s ear as her body shivers in anticipation.

She comes so quickly – and him soon after – that she doesn’t notices the quiet clicking of the door as Ruby leaves. But when she opens her eyes and turns to face Killian he soothes her face with his hand and whispers – between light kisses pressed to her lips – “Don’t worry, love, she’ll be back.”


	2. Chapter 2

The second time, Ruby spends the night, but she sleeps as far away from the two of them as she possibly can. Emma, curled into Killian’s back, nose nuzzling softly as she falls into sleep, lashes fluttering. The other woman had tried to pull her into their space, limbs tangled and entwined, but instead she’d rolled away, on to her back, and stared at the ceiling for hours before her eyes finally closed.

Ruby awakens early, too early, in the morning.  With the sunlight just beginning to stream in through the blinds, she sees how well they  _fit_  together, even in their sleep. Emma’s so golden, long limbs, hair falling all around her, like the fairytale princess she should be. Not like her, not some creature who needs to be  _controlled_ , who can run free in the woods but contained everywhere else. Not some creature that has only ever killed the ones that she  _loves._ (Or should have loved, or could have loved one day.)

If Emma is golden, Killian is dark, with his black on black (on black) during the day, and his hooded eyes at night, watching her hands as they circle him, stroke him,watching her lips when they capture Emma’s. The dark of his stubble burning her thighs, his mouth on her, the way he gripped her hips as she twisted her legs in the sheets, Emma’s hands threading through her hair, sliding her fingers across her lips.

She knows Emma is awake, too, from the way her body tenses when she feels the bed shift and slide as Ruby gets up. She doesn’t pretend for long (that’s never been Emma’s way), as she rolls her body over, sleepily, Killian still fast asleep. She reaches out and is close enough to grab one of her hands. She twines her fingers in between Ruby’s and murmurs, “Stay.”

There’s no heat behind it, though, because Ruby knows that Emma knows that she won’t stay. Not this morning, not when she feels lost within the routine of Emma and Killian, not when she doesn’t know her place between their matched  _togetherness._

She still allows Emma to pull her back to bed, for what feels like hours and seconds all at one. She still allows Emma’s leg to slide in between hers as Emma presses her lips to hers. It’s sleepy and slow, and Ruby can’t help but to wrap her arms around Emma, her still-naked skin warm, her hands smoothing over skin until she can’t take anymore or else she’ll never leave.

(And she has to leave.)

“I have to go,” she whispers after a while, and she presses a kiss to Kilian’s forehead on her way out.

**.**

Killian comes to her one morning at the diner. Granny is upstairs taking a nap while Ruby minds the restaurant. (She’s been doing that too much of late, but still resists Ruby’s pleas to see the doctor.)

He sits at the counter and orders a cup of coffee, waiting patiently while she attends to the other customers before she places a mug of the steaming brew in front of him. She turns to leave, but a quick arch of his brow stops her because she knows – she  _knows_  –that she has been avoiding him again, avoiding  _them_  and the things that she is not ready to face.

He asks her how her day is going and offers her a hand around the restaurant. “I’m no good with trays and serving,” he says with a shrug. “Balance and all that. But I’ve been told that I make a mean French Toast.”

“We have a cook,” she says, instead of what she means.

 _Thank you, thank you, thank you_.

(It feels like it should be so simple to just say yes to his offer of assistance. Ruby knows that this is what Emma loves about him – his steadiness, his willingness to pitch in wherever, whenever – “I’m good in a fight,” he always says.)

(And he is.)

It seems so wrong that Ruby should fit in somewhere between the two of them. They’re a unit. Ruby has seen it firsthand. She’s watched it happen from (almost) the beginning, but because she’s a masochist (it seems, with the two of them at least), she asks, “Does Emma know you’re here?”

She watches something flicker across his face and it first seems dark and dangerous, but then it turns into something…thoughtful.

“She’s aware,” he says. He pauses as he stands and walks to other side of the counter, continuing on his quest to help while he talks.

“But Emma doesn’t like to ask for things.” He shrugs as if he is used to it.

(She supposes that he is. Used to it, that is. But she wonders if it ever bothers him, the way Emma’s always looking over her shoulder, waiting for the bad news to hit her when she least expects it.)

“What does that even mean?” She asks him, surprised at how calm he is and how easily they’ve eased into this conversation – dangerous and slippery and all too public – as if discussing the weather.

He throws her a heated glance, so quickly that she could have easily missed it, if she were not so attuned – too attuned – to his every movement. She’s about to tell him that it’s not the place, that it’s not  _appropriate_ , to look at her that way when his eyes quickly shutter and he’s back to normal.

“It means we have things to discuss, Red, but she won’t beg and neither will I.”

Ruby’s about to jump in, offended, when he continues, “I may cajole, I may tease, but I won’t beg.”

(When Granny comes down for the lunch shift he heads off, with a bag of food and to-go cup of cocoa and says he’s going to meet Emma for lunch at the station but that they’re grabbing a drink at The Rabbit Hole later.)

**.**

They are drunk the bar later that night when Killian takes her hand in his, his thumb tracing a pattern on her palm while they wait for the next round. Emma’s at the bar and Ruby fights the urge to snatch her hand away. She’d cite the crowd, but it’s early in the week and they’re at a booth hidden in the back.

When Emma arrives with the tumbler’s full of whiskey (her) and rum (them), she says nothing about the hand-holding, thumb-tracing that continues in front of her. She shifts into the booth next to Ruby and merely places a hand on Ruby’s leg under the table, giving a slight squeeze before remaining there – unmoving and steady presence.

Two drinks later, Emma’s hand has slid higher – bolder and stroking – until she’s shifting in her seat and she feels a blush creeping along her skin. Killian’s watching them with amusement, his earring glinting in as the dim light in the bar hits it  _just so_. He’s teasing them both with words, drunken but serious, with the way that his tongue darts out to lick his lips on occasion, or the way that his teeth drag across his lower lip at Emma’s half-smile.

She does not go home with them that night; they are all too drunk for anything but sleep. But as they stumble out of the bar – charmingly she hopes, not drunk and disorderly, though Emma  _is_  the sheriff – she promises herself that she will just say goodnight and be on her way home.

As with all of her promises and plans, this one, too, goes awry. She watches as Killian presses Emma into the wall outside the bar, his lips are greedy and Ruby is fascinated by the way they play over Emma’s, the way that he tugs and pulls, and the way that his hips press her further into the wall. Moments later, he pulls away and whispers something in Emma’s ear, her cheeks flushed and her hair mussed.

(When Killian kisses her goodnight, safely inside the apartment next to the diner, she wishes Emma was there, too, to push them inside her tiny apartment, not to leave the bed for days unending.)

**.**

(None of them is exactly as they seem at first glance, but she still cannot seem to grasp how she fits in.)


	3. Chapter 3

Killian takes them out on a sailboat a few weeks later. Emma packs a bag full of sunscreen and blankets while Ruby gathers some supplies from the diner, packing them into a small basket. Neither of them questions how and where he procured the sailboat. He likes to remind them regularly that he _is_ a pirate, and though Emma is the sheriff, she does not always appear to mind when he does something just on the other edge of legal.

He always brings them back, he insists as he holds her hand to help her board the boat, and he never takes them far. She laughs and replies that he’s going to get arrested one day. Killian tightens his grip on her hand at that and, even though she is safely on board, she lets him hold onto it for longer. His thumb traces her hand, just as it did weeks ago at the bar, the cool of his rings catching her skin, contrasting with his warmth.

(And when the mood gets too serious too early in the day, Emma quips that the threat of arrest probably isn’t enough of a detractor, as Killian quite likes being cuffed. Ruby would swear he goes red at that, his hand dropping hers as he reaches to scratch at the back of his ear, but pirates don’t blush, do they?)

**.**

Emma finds her first, the day after their drunken evening. Ruby likes to take long walks in the woods at the edge of town, especially around the time of the full moon. Once her memories returned and she realized that she could control the beast within, she would shift and run through the forest for fun. Mostly, though, she just walks. It is in these woods that Emma comes across her path – or rather, seems on a purposeful mission to find her, with that direct stride and her shoulders squared.

They wander – not speaking much – down to the old Toll Bridge. Ruby bends down to inspect some stones for skipping across the creek, her fingers gliding over the rocks, seeking out the smoothest pieces.

“Here’s the thing,” Emma says softly. “We’re all trying to figure this out and it won’t work if you keep running away. Believe me, I know.”

Ruby stands up straight, stones in hand, as she continues to inspect them, not wanting to meet Emma’s eyes. She had been convinced that Emma would be the one to tell her that it’s been fun but things need to go back to normal. She simply cannot imagine what Emma must have felt the previous night, watching her boyfriend walking Ruby home _after_ he had kissed Emma senseless.

Sometimes Emma is too perceptive when it comes to other’s emotions, and she must read everything written on Ruby’s body, because she reaches over to take a stone from Ruby’s hand, her fingers brushing and lingering as she chooses the best one. She tosses it into the water before she speaks again, “He’s not just _my_ boyfriend anymore. As ridiculous as the word _boyfriend_ seems to apply to Captain Hook.”

She nudges Ruby with her shoulder and continues, “And _you’re_ not just my friend anymore. The rest?” Emma shrugs. “I don’t know.”

**.**

Between their night at the bar and the afternoon on the boat, Ruby’s avoidance of them has dwindled to downright non-existent. Not that Killian would have even let her avoid him (or them) with his steady presence. However, Killian had warned her that Emma does not like to ask for things, and she is beginning to realize that it is true.

They’ve spent time alone, just the two of them, her and Emma, same as her and Killian. It is much easier to do in public under the guise of ‘girl’s night out’ at The Rabbit Hole. They sip their drinks and she assures Ruby that it does not bother her to know that Killian has taken her out – just the two of them on another ‘borrowed’ boat for hours.

They had docked just out of the harbor and he had made her writhe and shiver in delight, wrapped in a blanket on deck, his lips tracing her body and his hand pressing into her skin. She had flipped their bodies and pressed him in return, pushing at his shoulders as she circled her hips until she couldn’t take any more. They’ve been together so many times that she knows exactly how his hand feels upon her skin, she begins to feel a ghost of if when she’s alone at night, mimicking his pressure upon her own body.

Emma assures Ruby that there is no jealousy in them having those moments together. Her eyes sparkle in the dim light of the bar, two drinks in, her mind less inhibited. However, she also does not ask to spend the night, even though Ruby wants it. She wants Emma to slide down the straps of her dress, and press her mouth to the skin at her collarbone. She wants to curl a finger around Emma’s hair and tug until their foreheads meet and their lips meet and their bodies meet.

Sometimes she doesn’t understand how to feel such _need_ for more than one person, but most of the time, she’s so lost in pleasure that she doesn’t think at all until later – much later, when she’s home alone and full of worry.

(It _does_ happen that night, but only after Ruby asks, hesitantly, what her plans are with Killian for the rest of the evening. Emma shrugs and mentions that he’s off somewhere with David and that she has the night free.)

**.**

Killian continues drops by at the diner to help sometimes and Granny jokes that she might as well put him on payroll after a few weeks. He always shrugs it off and says ‘he’s plenty of coin at his disposal’, but he keeps coming anyway. He flirts with everyone who comes into the diner. He has a wink or a smile for the customers and quip ready on his tongue.

His shift is always over when hers is, as they tumble into her apartment, racing towards the shower until there are soapy explorations. (Sometimes they don’t make the shower, Killian capturing her lips when they enter her small space, maneuvering her to the couch, as he pulls her shirt out of her skirt, his hand tracing the skin along her waist.)

**.**

_We love you_ ; they like to say when it’s the three of them together. Sometimes when they wake up, Ruby lying between the two of them, hands stroking her hair or gliding along her legs, knuckles brushing her bare nipples or slipping between her legs.

These moments are her favorite, the ones where it is all three of them together, hearts racing, bodies flushed. She loves it when she is sitting with her back at the headboard, watching as Killian grips Emma’s hips and thrusts from behind, Emma’s eyes dark and her teeth digging into her lower lip before she tells Ruby to come closer until Emma’s mouth is warm against her. Or when it’s her and Emma, lips fused and bodies pressed together, hands wandering, while Killian watches carefully, his hand stroking himself until he cannot help but join them.

Ruby discovers that Emma can ask for things more easily when Killian is around. He says it first, “We love you, darling.”

Emma takes his hand as he nuzzles her face, giving her a quick kiss. “Yes,” she adds, quietly, looking over at Ruby. “We love you.”

_We love you,_ they like to say when the three of them are falling asleep, Killian in the middle, their heads leaning on his chest. Killian will press his lips into her hair and Emma will lace their fingers together as rest their hands on his body.

_We love you. I love you. We love you. I love you._

(It’s hard to fight against those words.)

**.**

She stops fighting the night before they are supposed to go sailing. She knocks on the door to the apartment, uninvited, her heart racing. When Emma opens the door, Killian close behind her, the words escape her lips quickly, “I love you.”

**.**

(They sail back into the harbor at dusk, the dipping sun creating an explosion of color in the sky, pink and purple clouds, rolling with the breeze.

And she realizes that she _is_ happy.)


End file.
